Living is hard (you know better than most)
by jnicweb
Summary: "There are many people who don't deserve the lives they are given. There are people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or those who just got dealt a crappy hand when God was shuffling cards."


**This fic is** **very non-canon. Some of it is canon, like Bobbi being part of New Shield, and them being married/divorced, but I also changed a lot of stuff.**

 **Oh, there are season two finale spoilers at the end as well.**

There are many people who don't deserve the lives they are given. There are people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or those who just got dealt a crappy hand when God was shuffling cards.

But the people who make the most out of the cards they were dealt are the ones who have no regrets.

I used to be one of those people. I used to roll with whatever came my way. Dead parents, _just a hurdle in life_. Debt, _no problem_. Alcoholic, _can't beat me_. Homelessness, _you call this a problem_? Pregnant girlfriend, _not the best but I can deal with it_.

Until I fell in love with that pregnant girlfriend. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. We were young and thought we were invincible, so we got married.

That was when we found out that we were incapable of agreeing, or even compromising on anything. We argued over everything, from what color the baby's room should be to what we should have for dinner to what the correct definition of "love" is. Our ideas and opinions differed in every possible way, and we could never see eye to eye on anything. Our personalities clashed and because we were both stubborn as hell there was no way one of us would admit defeat and submit to the other.

Everyone always says "opposites attract" but they don't really know what they're talking about. You have to have _something_ in common in order for a relationship to work. There must be something you can agree on without causing World War III.

We were so caught up in our own personal arguments and problems that we lost interest in work. We both lost out jobs and our house was foreclosed. We were homeless, bankrupt, seven months pregnant and jobless. She blamed me, I blamed her, and all in all we did nothing about our situation until another thing went wrong in our lives.

She miscarried.

The only thing keeping us together, the baby, was gone. We decided that it was best to cut our losses now, rather than later when we had kids that needed us to be together. So we went our separate ways and I thought that she was just another obstacle I had to overcome in my game of Life.

But she wouldn't get out of my head.

I still thought her ideas and opinions were wrong, but I loved her anyway. I loved her little quirks and mannerisms, and wanted the chance to get to know her without the arguments. I thought our first attempts at a relationship together couldn't have ended any worse, but I wanted to try again. I was willing to swallow my pride in order to be with her.

So I contacted her out of the blue, and found out she was in town for a couple of days, which was lucky because she was leaving on a six month trip soon.

She seemed reluctant to meet with me, but I couldn't really blame her. We hadn't parted on the best of terms. But she agreed to meet me and try our relationship again, probably one of the only things we ever agreed on.

In order to start out this new thing right, I didn't let her talk once I was in her apartment. I just kissed her, and let my emotions do the talking for me.

But the next morning, the old problems came back, and she riled me up and I said some things I would regret later, and we left on even worse terms than before. She had left me steaming and angry, and made me believe her earlier miscarriage was my fault, as well as the reason we fell apart. I guess I romanticized our previous encounter together a little too much.

I resolved to never talk to her again.

But I was always terrible at keeping promises.

The next time we met up was because of her. She had had a nasty break up and was worried for her life, so she contacted me, strictly professional she said, in order to make sure she stayed safe. I was working as a bodyguard to pay the bills, and thought, well this is going to end terribly.

And it did.

Not in the professional sense that I failed in my job to keep her safe, but in the personal sense.

We hooked up yet again.

You would have thought I would have learned my lesson by now, but I was never a quick learner.

Once again, this relationship ended in disaster, with me accusing her of making up the scary boyfriend just to hook up with me, and her accusing me of not taking my job seriously enough.

And once again, we split up, hating each other and wishing that we had just chosen to stay away that very first time.

But, when have regrets ever been fun?

Before this girl, I never had any regrets. None whatsoever. I enjoyed every part of life, and overcame every single obstacle thrown at me. I was proud of my accomplishments and happy with my job and content with my life. Then this girl got dealt into my hand and I had no idea what to do with her. She didn't fit anywhere in my life. She didn't belong in my life. But I was used to dealing with whatever was thrown my way, so I tried to deal with her, but she was impossible. I couldn't understand her, or figure her out. She was an enigma and enigmas bother me. I have to know how something works, or why something works. I can't be left in the dark. But with her, I was. And I didn't know how to deal with that.

So I kept trying. I kept trying to figure this girl out. I would call her out of the blue, to see if she had changed, or if I had finally finished decoding her. And each time, I was half disappointed that I didn't know her any better than before, and half relieved that she was still unreadable and still held the same magnetic charm that kept me coming back.

I wanted to know her inside and out, but also didn't want her to be shallow with one layer like all the other girls I had known. She became a kind of game I played with myself. I would think about everything I knew about her and try to piece them together into a puzzle.

But there were parts of her that were questionable.

Like she would tell me she was employed at a library, but didn't know the first thing about the Dewey decimal system. Or she would kick me out, claiming she had to take her dog out, even though I never saw a bag of dog food anywhere, not to mention a dog. Or she would say she had no money, so couldn't go out for drinks, even though she had just moved into a new, expensive apartment. Or she would tell me she had to go on a business trip (after she had "quit" her job at the library) and then came back with a tan and told me she was never going to Hawaii again. One, who goes to Hawaii on a _business trip_ as a secretary (her new "job")? Two, who does that, and then has such a terrible time that they never want to go back? I mean she's a secretary; how horrible could Hawaii be?

I didn't understand why she insisted on lying to my face when we both knew she was hiding something. At first I ignored it; maybe she really _was_ a librarian, but helped with the kids in the picture book section. Maybe she did have a dog who was really quiet and ate people food. Maybe she was a secretary and her boss was so horrible she hated Hawaii because of him. But those things didn't add up to me. I knew she was hiding something from me, and it was big.

It wasn't until many months later that I found out what it was.

She was a secret agent for a super-secret agency and had super-super-secret missions she couldn't tell _anyone_ about. And I thought, well that explains why she kept trying to get rid of me with terrible lies and bad business trips.

I thought things would get better. She had nothing to worry about now. I knew her secret and she had nothing to hide.

But things got worse.

She started keeping missions from me.

She would get home late and bark at me to leave her alone when I noticed her limping.

I started to worry about the unbreakable girl.

I started to withdraw from her.

I couldn't trust her anymore. I didn't want to get entangled in her web of lies and broken promises.

We took a break from each other for a while. During which I was employed by her super-secret agency and started to work along-side her. This made things even worse. She kept even more secrets from me. Our missions suddenly turned into "her" missions that I wasn't allowed to know anything about. She was flippant with me, and took orders from people above her. Never in all the years that I had known her, had I seen her obey other people's orders. It scared me. I thought she was losing her personality, her uniqueness, and the things that made her different from everyone else.

I knew she was keeping something from me yet again.

And sure enough, she was.

She had been secretly working for another super-secret agency that was planning on overtaking the original super-secret agency she was a part of.

I didn't know if I should have be surprised or not.

She had always wanted to do the right thing, and sometimes got in over her head trying to make things right.

But that didn't stop me from feeling betrayed.

Even more betrayed than the first time I found out she was working for a super-secret agency. Because now it was personal. She had betrayed the agency I was working for, the people who were my friends too. I knew these people, had fought beside them, and witnessed them risk their lives for the things they believed in. And she had thrown that away like it meant nothing. It hurt.

I thought I had finally figured out her puzzle and fit every back-stabbing piece into place, but I was wrong.

When she put her own body in front of the bullet meant for me, I found another piece that obliterated the whole puzzle I had before. I found out that I had completely put the puzzle together wrong, and couldn't have been happier that I had misjudged her.

So while she recuperated in the hospital, I thought about all the past pieces I had of her, and how she fit into my deck of cards.

I know living is hard. I know sometimes you want to just say screw it and just give up. I know this feeling better than most.

But this girl knew it best. She had to deal with me for half her life.

 **Yay! I imagine the cheekiest grin at the end, like the smuggest, self-centered smile Lance can have. Or like a little winking emoji.**

 **And I know it was sometimes really cheesy, and didn't sound anything like Hunter would say, but it fit in with an idea I had, and I had to change the plot line to make it work. Hope you liked it!**


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